Robbinsville mayor seeks third term

Robbinsville Mayor David Fried gives his State of the Township address to members of the Mid Jersey Chamber of Commerce at the Grainger Industrial Supply Distribution Center in Robbinsville on Thursday, March 7, 2013. Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton.

ROBBINSVILLE — Mayor Dave Fried will seek re-election to a third four-year term, he announced yesterday.

Petitions to run for mayor and the council seats held by Council Vice President Vince Calcagno and Councilwoman Sheree McGowan are due Sept. 1, but Fried informed residents of his decision to run in a letter yesterday.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people over the last six months, while I was thinking whether I should or shouldn’t do this, and the people in the town have been very encouraging,” Fried said in an interview yesterday. “An election’s like a report card. You get to see how people feel about the job you’re doing.”

Fried was first elected mayor in 2005, when the township switched forms of government, and was re-elected in 2009.

He had previously served five years as a committeeman for what was then the Washington Township Committee.

In his eight years at the helm, the township has undergone changes in the way it operates and prioritizes, Fried said.

Where residential development was once the goal — attracting new, young families into town, especially at the sprawling Town Center development — the township has since put more of an effort toward enticing large commercial businesses to set up shop in the township, Fried said.

“The population’s changed, and the influx of ratables has certainly helped,” Fried said. “We’re really trying to create a community that people want to live in, and Robbinsville continues to be a very desirable town.”

Fried is a Republican, though elections in Robbinsville are nonpartisan. He is the CEO of TriCore Inc., a human resources and payroll administration company headquartered in town.

The decision wasn’t an easy one and, at points, Fried said there was a 50-50 chance he would decline to run for a third term.

Though the role of “mayor” is technically part-time, Fried said it requires a substantial time commitment, a tough balancing act with his duties at TriCore and at home.

“It really was a 50-50 thought process for me,” Fried said. “On one side, I like being mayor but it’s a very, very large time commitment and I really had to think long and hard about whether I could continue to balance that over the next few years.”

What eventually pushed Fried to seek re-election was a deal with Amazon.com, who will open a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in March 2014 after months of negotiations with the mayor and township staff.

Under the agreement, the giant online retailer will make $20 million in payments in lieu of taxes over 20 years — less than the normal commercial tax rate — while creating 1,400 jobs.

“I made a strong commitment to Amazon when I asked them to come to Robbinsville, and I felt it was important for me to continue making sure that the project stayed on track, so they would open on time,” Fried said. “That was one of the things they asked me about. They wanted to make sure they had continuity on the project.”

“Since they made a commitment to our town, I had to make a commitment to stay and see the project through,” he said.

If re-elected, Fried said he will use a third term to see the completion of Town Center South, a mixed-use development adjacent to the sprawling Town Center, and find an anchor tenant for the Foxmoor Shopping Center on Route 33.